time travel is possible but cannot be done with our tech

[cameron99]

This is possible but maybe can not be done until lets say 4100 unless they come up with something that can move as fast as 3 times the suns power to only skip 1 day but i dont think a human can survive such speed the person would be disnergrated at such speed

[MeteorWayne]

Off to the Unexplained, unless you provide some realistic scientific basis for your assertion.
Why did you pick 4100?

[thermionic]

Wow, I'd hate to be disnergrated! Sounds painful... /jd

[tanstaafl76]

Why did you pick 4100?

I mean really, why not?

[SpaceXFanMobius57]

Time travel is a bad bad bad bad bad idea, namely cause of the grandfather effect. Squash a bug and the entire future could be at stake.

[Solifugae]

Time travel is a bad bad bad bad bad idea, namely cause of the grandfather effect. Squash a bug and the entire future could be at stake.

I think it's even worse than that. If you think about it, the future is at stake no matter what the change is, because the moment you went back in time was an exact state, right down to the positions of subatomic particles in your body. Even just going back to 1975, and never stepping foot out of the machine could cause a paradox, since the appearance of your machine in that space would alter the currents of air. Down the line, this small change may mean that in 2010 when you go back there is a conflict between the original timeline and the one you created on a small a level as a single oxygen molecule in your lungs being a micrometer away from its position in the original timeline. You are made up of all the states of your body, and it was a specific combination at a specific moment that occurred in that timeline. By altering this, you destroy the universes consistency and create a paradox, or an endless loop of them.

The only resolvable way to get out of this would seem to be alternate timelines. However, perhaps the timeline is self saving. Maybe you go back and destroy your Goofy baseball cap while you are wearing it. As we know, this creates a paradox, since it doesn't exist in the future for you to wear. Still, if the timeline automatically maintains consistency, then you will have merely gone back to destroy a cap that you never wore, and your recollection of why you went back will be overwritten. Who knows? Unfortunately, for would be time travelers, the best way to save consistency is that time travel is impossible. Or at least backwards time travel is. We can always settle for time dilation to travel into the future at a different rate to others.

[Booban]

Time travel is a bad bad bad bad bad idea, namely cause of the grandfather effect. Squash a bug and the entire future could be at stake.

The what effect?? I am pretty sure its called the butterfly effect, not the film, the dinosaur book.

Does not a kind of time travel already exist? Do orbiting atomic clocks not tick at a different rate than one on earth?

[Swampcat]

The what effect?? I am pretty sure its called the butterfly effect, not the film, the dinosaur book.

It's actually called the The Grandfather Paradox.

The Butterfly Effect is related to Chaos Theory.

I agree with MW, without some relevant scientific discussion this thread belongs in The Unexplained.

[Booban]

I call butterfly effect! His example squashed a bug...not his grandfather!

[MeteorWayne]

Trust me Swampcat, the clock is ticking. I try and give at least 24 hours for the OP to show up again before it is moved to the proper dustbin;)

[jakethesnake]

Yep… I’d be a little embarrassed to throw a post like this out there…

[mark_d_s]

Hold on before you dismiss this brilliant piece of reasoning chaps. I think he's onto something...

"time travel is possible but cannot be done with our tech"

This is possible

Indeed it is possible that time travel is possible but cannot be done with our tech.

but maybe can not be done until lets say 4100

I assume you mean 41:00 using the well known 48 hour clock. That's 5 pm tomorrow.

unless they come up with something that can move as fast as 3 times the suns power

You forgot to give units, but that's OK. If we normalise the suns power to 1, we will need to travel at 3.

to only skip 1 day

Seeing as we've already established that you're talking about 5 o'clock tomorrow evening (friday), skipping a day would mean (I presume) 5 o'clock saturday.

but i dont think a human can survive such speed the person would be disnergrated at such speed

Know what you mean - I felt a bit disnergrated this morning.



So, in summary, we can reach tea-time saturday if we travel at 3, but any faster you might reach sunday in error, any slower - well goodness knows where the math might lead us!

[John_with_a_B]

Time travel will be possible some time in the future when we have the ability to travel at relativistic speeds. Then you hop in your spaceship and go somewhere, anywhere, and then come back. As long as you spend a while at near the speed of light, you will come back far in the future. Einstein called it the Twin Paradox, where one leaves like that and the other stays here. The traveling twin returns to find his twin brother much older.

One slight catch though. It is a one way trip. Traveling backwards in time is NOT possible, so the Grandfather Paradox could never happen. Travel fast enough for long enough and you could come back hundreds of thousands or even millions of years in the future.

[MeteorWayne]

OK, this has survived in SB&T long enough. Forum travel is possible, so it will now reside in The Unexplained.

[Wellington1114]

How do you propose a machine, or even a spaceship can travel succesfully through time? If we can manipulate a wormhole maybe, that is if they exist. I would think time travel would be more of a holographic/ mental trip rather than physical.

[tanstaafl76]

OK, this has survived in SB&T long enough. Forum travel is possible, so it will now reside in The Unexplained.

OMG MeteorWayne has 3 times the suns power!!!!

[Wellington1114]

OK, this has survived in SB&T long enough. Forum travel is possible, so it will now reside in The Unexplained.

OMG MeteorWayne has 3 times the suns power!!!!

Meaning he emits 3 times the radiation of our sun?

[tanstaafl76]

I assume so, but we better confirm with a Temporal Expert whose specialty is the year 4100.

[MeteorWayne]

I always check with the Time Being before making such a move

[ThereIWas2]

In Steven Hawking's book, "The Universe in a Nutshell", he seems to think it is impossible, FTL or no. The book is quite easy to read, but does get seriously into string theory and 11-dimensional stuff.